The superstar of the Indian women cricket team and brand ambassador of PlayerzPot, Smriti Mandhana, has won the 2021 ICC Women’s Cricketer of the Year award for her stupendous efforts with the bat last year. Mandhana had earlier found her way into the 2021 Women’s T20I Team of the Year. She was the only Indian in the XI after having top-scored in the format. She scored an incredible 255 runs at an average of 31.87 nine matches in the format with an exceptional strike rate of 131.44. She was arguably the best Indian cricketer in the T20I format amongst the Men and the Women’s team.
Apart from the T20I format, she was also excellent in the other two formats. In Tests, she scored a whopping 244 runs in the two matches she played against England and Australia in 2021. One of her knocks was a scintillating 127-run innings in Indian women’s first-ever pink-ball Test, which has gone down in history as one of the best knocks in women’s cricket history. Her innings played a vital role in keeping the women from down under at bay and restricting them to a draw. She also broke the 72-year-old record of the highest score by a visiting player in women’s Test cricket in Australia. In ODIs, she scored an incredible 352 runs in just 11 matches.
Ever since making her debut for team India in 2013 against Bangladesh at Vadodara, Smriti Mandhana has gone on to become one of the best players of women’s cricket with her consistent performance in all the formats of the game. The 25-year-old has gone on to become a new symbol of hope for the future of women’s cricket in India. In ODIs, she has scored 2377 runs at an average of 41.70 in 62 matches whereas, in T20Is, she has scored 1971 runs in 84 matches at an average of 25.93. She has only played four Test matches but has scored an excellent 325 runs with a batting average of 46.42. There is no doubt that Smriti will go on to become one of the greatest women cricketers to ever grace the sport in the years to come.
